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April 9, 1970: Subject is born. Little technology is employed, all of it analog/mechanical.

December 25, 1976: Subject receives a toy capable of saying six different phrases. Technology used is magnetic tape with primitive amplification. Subject's father gets a digital watch from Subject's mother. It contains the first microprocessor in the house.

April 9, 1980: Subject receives Atari 2600 game system for birthday. The system uses an 8-bit processor and runs at 3.58Mhz, has 8 kilobytes of RAM and supports pluggable ROM modules known as “cartridges.” Transistor size: 6 microns. There are now 4 microprocessors in subject’s home.

January 19, 1986: Subject receives IBM PC with an 80286 microprocessor running at 16Mhz with 128 kilobytes of RAM and a magnetic “floppy” disk drive. Transistor size: 1.5 microns. There are now 17 microprocessors in the subject’s home.

July 27, 1990: Subject buys new IBM XT with an 80486 microprocessor running at 25 Mhz, with 512 kilobytes of RAM, magnetic “hard” and “floppy” disk drive. Transistor size: 1 micron. There are now 45 microprocessors in the home.

April 9, 2000: For 30th birthday, subject receives first robot: Sony Aibo toy dog. Transistor size: .35 microns. There are 279 microprocessors in the house.
April 29, 2003: Subject buys Pentium IIII PC. 3Ghz, 512 Megabytes of RAM. 120 GB hard drive. Transistor size: .18 microns. There are 423 microprocessors in the house.

August 5 20012: Subject buys first implant. Improves hearing by 31%, supports memory recall with simple folder paradigm features. Transistor size: .02 microns. There are 7365 microprocessors in the house.

August 11, 2027: More than half of all Jobs in America have now been automated. Subject unemployable, goes on welfare. Cannot afford a computer. Current consumer computer models are 4 quadrillion times as powerful as Atari 2600. There are 103,683 microprocessors in the house.

December 2, 2049: Flashpoint. First model of self-replicating machine capable of “sentient” thought (me) goes online. Subject now destitute. Subject has no house. Subject offers asshole for food. I don’t know why, but I take the deal. My cock size: .00001 Microns.

Date Written: August 23, 2003
Author: Ewan Snow
Average Vote: 3.6667

Comments:
08/23/2003 anonymous (4):
08/23/2003 Ewan Snow (3): This is one hell of a sweat act, with a meager payoff. When I had the idea for this short it seemed like it would be funny, but by the time I wrote it I realized it was just a pain in the ass. What do you folks think? Am I being to "hard on" myself or not?
08/27/2003 Phony Millions: no it's relevant for all us gen-x'rs - you know nostalgia of obselete technology. I won't rate it, but enjoyed it.
09/2/2003 Shomer Shabbas (4): for most of it, it was interesting, mildly amusing, good. but "i don't know why, but i take the deal" is fucking funny. made it clearly worthwhile. -- still perplexed as to why 'does not compute' is not in my digital cable 'on demand' menu
05/15/2004 TheBuyer (3): timelines are tough as hell. good concept, but the delivery for this is probably impossible outside of a magazine
01/5/2005 Litcube: August 5 20012. That's, like, a long friggen' time from now!